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Stories From The Field

Juliet Mwebesa, UNHCR Water specialist

Juliet Mwebesa, UNHCR Water specialist

Since early 2008, she has been overseeing a major water infrastructure project in the sprawling Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda.

How much water are the refugees in Nakivale currently receiving?

With the completion of the first stage of our new water system, we are providing 11 litres of clean water per capita, but I stress that this is 11 litres on average. It varies from people who have absolutely no drinking water to people who have up to 20 litres which is our target. The minimum standard for UNHCR is 20 litres per person per day.

How far do families have to walk for water?

Again, it varies across the settlement but on average, people are walking two to four kilometres for water.

Where are you sourcing water from?

There is ground water but our efforts to harvest it have not been very successful. Our studies show that we have a very difficult geo-technical layout under the ground here. In the whole settlement we have only two boreholes. They are very close together and they are low yield bores. At the moment, our greatest source of water in Nakivale is trucked-in water from Lake Nakivale itself. As you can imagine, this comes at a cost, especially treatment costs because the water quality in the lake is very poor.

Do you harvest rainwater?

Yes, when it rains, we do take advantage of that. In institutional buildings like reception centres, schools and health centres we've installed rainwater tanks and this is useful during the rainy season, but when the dry season comes, these tanks run absolutely dry.

Can you describe the new water system you are working on?

It has involved the construction of a pumping station on the lake, two generators, and eight large water treatment tanks up on the hill. From there it goes to another series of tanks for clean water storage and is moved to the water collection points where we have a tap stand.
At the end of this phase of construction, we have only one water collection point but we have managed to pipe a distribution line to another 2,500 people. We are only using four of the tanks at the moment but the system has the potential to provide clean water for 10,000 people.